SOURCE: Vaughn, Jack A. “‘Persevering, Unexhausted Bard’: Tom D'Urfey.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 53, no. 4 (December 1967): 342-48.

In the following essay, Vaughn views Durfey's plays as valuable for the insights they provide into Restoration dramatic tastes.

Thomas D'Urfey (1653-1723), known to his contemporaries as Tom, was one of the more popular and prolific of Restoration playwrights, yet his name is all but unknown today. It is unfortunate that a dramatist who produced thirty-three plays for the English theatre and who shared the limelight with Congreve and Vanbrugh in Jeremy Collier's indictment of the London stage should today be unrepresented by a single modern edition of any of his dramatic works. This is not to say that D'Urfey's dramaturgy was on a par with that of the major Restoration playwrights, but his works can not be ignored by the serious student of English drama, for they reveal the tastes of...